The present invention relates to a triaxial contact assembly having an intermediate contact within an outer contact and an inner contact within the intermediate contact, the inner and intermediate and outer contacts being isolated from one another by means of inner and outer insulators respectively.
A triaxial contact assembly includes three electrical contacts, inner, intermediate and outer, isolated from one another by inner and outer insulators. Taking into account additional components needed to retain the finished assembly on the cable, triaxial contact assemblies suitable for terminating screened, twisted wire pairs have generally included at least seven components.
Examples of such contact assemblies are known from published European patent applications Nos. 0190843 and 0067727 and from United Kingdom application No. 2085676. The latter two documents describe assemblies having ten loose components each; that of application 0190843 has nine such components.
In assembling such contact arrangements onto the cable, some twelve to fifteen separate operations must be carried out, the most difficult of which has been found to be the feeding of an already mounted inner contact, together with the bared multi-cored wire into the intermediate contact while hampered by a loose spacer (that is the disc-like member which spaces the ferrule, which retains the assembly on the cable, from the inner components of the contact assembly).